Meet the Self-Congratulatory Tyrants Who Run Politico

Did you ever get the sense that the people who run Politico are arrogant tools? Us too. Founders Jim VandeHei, John Harris, Robert Allbritton, and reporter Ben Smith were on Charlie Rose last night and they OWNED THE SEGMENT.

VandHei and Harris are nauseatingly self-satisfied people and must be tyrants to work for. They dazzled Rose with talk about how newspapers are dying but Politico makes money and deserves a Pulitzer Prize. Allbritton actually said that.

Also: VandeHei respects POWER and FEAR and claims—literally—that every member of Congress reads Politico OBSESSIVELY, and Harris talks about how avant garde it was of him to hire an untested Ben Smith from the pissant New York Observer and doesn't seem to know that he actually hired Smith from the New York Daily News, which is the sixth-most widely read newspaper in the Unites States. Nice work turning a nobody loser bum like him into a WINNER.

Then, after bragging ad nauseum about how Politico goes DEEP and is IMMEDIATE and OWNS things and devotes more resources to the White House than any other news organization, VandeHei admits that the one thing he'd really like to know the answer to is "how does it really work" in the White House. Seriously.